In Roscosmos’s estimates, the development of the super-heavy rocket and the construction of infrastructure for it at the Vostochny cosmodrome will cost $25 billion

ZHUKOVSKY (Moscow Region), July 19. /TASS/. The first launch of Russia’s super-heavy carrier rocket is scheduled for 2028, according to the presentation delivered by Energomash Research and Production Association at the MAKS-2017 international airshow on Wednesday.

"The first flight of a super-heavy-class carrier rocket is planned for 2028," the document says.

A source in the rocket and space industry earlier told TASS that the first launch of a Russian Energiya-5 super-heavy carrier rocket was planned for 2028.

Energiya Rocket and Space Corporation CEO Vladimir Solntsev presented earlier at a Moscow conference his project of an Energiya-5V super-heavy carrier rocket designed for a manned mission to the Moon. According to him, the upper hydrogen stage of the Angara-A5V carrier will be used in the super-heavy rocket’s development along with the first and second stages of the new Soyuz-5 medium-class rocket.

A source in the rocket and space industry later told TASS that Energiya had defined the approximate design of two types of rockets intended for implementation: the Energiya-5V-PTK and the Energyia-5VR-PTK with the liftoff weight of 2,368 and 2,346 tonnes, respectively.

Both are capable of delivering about 100 tonnes of payload into the low-Earth orbit, and also 20.5 tonnes into the near-Moon orbit, which is tantamount to the weight of the lunar version of the Federatsiya spacecraft.

Instead of a spacecraft, a lunar take-off and landing module can be mounted on a carrier rocket. An inter-orbital tug based on the DM acceleration unit is intended to be used for delivering the Federatsiya spacecraft or a lunar take-off and landing module to the Moon.

In Roscosmos’s estimates, the development of the super-heavy rocket and the construction of infrastructure for it at the Vostochny cosmodrome will cost 1.5 trillion rubles ($25 billion).

Roscosmos also earlier stated that there was no need to rush with the creation of a super-heavy carrier rocket as no payloads were available for it. The new Russian super-heavy carrier rocket may get four stages, according to Energomash’s materials.

According to the materials, the first stage is expected to get four RD-171MV engines, the second stage - one RD171MV and the fourth stage - one 11D58MF engine.

At the same time, three variants are considered for the super-heavy rocket’s third stage: the RD-191V, the RD-0150 or two RD-0124AP engines.